November, 2015

Glenn Thrush: “The fundamentals are in place for a big winter push. Cruz’s fundraising has been near the top of the field ($26 million as of Oct. 15) and his campaign has an efficient 50 percent burn rate with about $14 million cash-on-hand.”

“Even the enemy is starting to take notice: Several Democratic sources told me that Hillary and Bill Clinton have increasingly begun to muse about the possibility of a Cruz candidacy – after months of focusing on the fast-fading Jeb Bush.”

Daily Beast: “Bush was supposed to be the peacemaker who mended fences with Hispanics, and reassured them that Romney’s cold shoulder notwithstanding, they were indeed welcome in the Republican Party. Mi casa es su casa.”

“But with a series of deft maneuvers, and a little political jujutsu, Trump managed to turn Bush’s asset into a liability that essentially took him out of the race.”

Huffington Post: “In the confidential January 2013 memo … Clinton told Obama she worried that support for closing Guantanamo would further erode unless the administration took action…She also encouraged Obama to consider moving Guantanamo detainees into the country.”

“The race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination enters a new and urgent phase this week after an already brutish stretch in which the dominance of Donald Trump and Ben Carson has exasperated rivals and the party’s political class,” the Washington Post reports.

“After months of waiting for the popular outsiders to implode, numerous Republican strategists no longer expect them to do so. Instead, opponents are angling to position themselves for what could become a protracted primary fight.”

New York Times: “Mr. Christie’s slavish devotion to New Hampshire, and his painstaking cultivation of its political leadership, paid by far their biggest dividend on Saturday when the influential New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper offered him an unexpectedly early and forceful endorsement.”

“Over the next few days, his determination will yield still more prizes: the endorsements of a widely courted former speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Donna Sytek, and two powerful and wealthy local real estate developers, Renee and Dan Plummer.”

“It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is. I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left. This is a murderer.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz, quoted by the Texas Tribune, on the man arrested for killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

When asked if he’d support Trump should he win the GOP presidential nomination, Kasich refused to even entertain the idea: “Well, he’s not going to be the nominee… because, at the end, look, he may have 20 percent of the vote. But he’s got 80 percent of Republicans who don’t support him.”

“In conversations over the past month, GOP establishment donors have confided to The Hill that for the first time in recent memory, they find themselves contemplating not supporting a Republican nominee for president.”

“Most, however, still believe that Trump will flame out before they have to face that decision.”

Jeb Bush said that Donald Trump is “uninformed” and “scary,” again questioning the billionaire real estate mogul’s fitness to be commander in chief, according to Politico.

Said Bush: “Look, I just think he’s uninformed. The simple fact is that he’s been wrong on Syria and on the refugees pretty consistently. And no one’s holding him to account. He first said we had no interest in being involved in Syria. And then he said let the Russians take out ISIS. And then he said let ISIS take out Assad. Back and forth it goes. And the net effect of this is in these really serious times he’s not a serious leader.”

Bush said he will still support Trump if he wins the GOP nomination, but admitted the idea of a Trump presidency is “kind of scary.”

Dan Balz: “If Republicans win the presidency in 2016, they would then control nearly everything – the White House, the House, probably the Senate and certainly a majority of governorships.”

“If Democrats hold the White House, they might win the Senate but probably would not have the House and would be in a distinct minority in the states. If they lose the White House, they would be virtually wiped out of power. For Democrats, that means a victory in the general election still would represent only a down payment on the future and a continuing struggle to implement the kind of progressive economic agenda that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have begun to talk about in their campaigns.”

Wall Street Journal: “The underdog narrative helps Mr. Rubio cast himself as a political outsider to a party desperate for change. But it glosses over a basic fact: The 44-year-old Florida senator has spent the bulk of his working life in politics, reared by the party whose leaders he occasionally campaigns against.”

“This tension between Rubio the insider and Rubio the outsider cuts to the heart of his biggest challenge in the Republican primary—positioning himself as a bridge candidate, while some of his rivals specifically target evangelicals and tea-party conservatives and others focus on rallying the establishment.”

“The Republican presidential field, which for much of the year has been full-throated in its denunciations of Planned Parenthood, has been nearly silent about the shooting in Colorado at one of its facilities that left a police officer and two others dead,” the Washington Post reports.

“In contrast, all three of the leading Democratic contenders quickly issued statements in support of Planned Parenthood.”

Gov. Chris Christie gained some traction with an endorsement from New Hampshire’s Union Leader, traditionally the most respected newspaper voice in the first-in-the-nation primary state, Politico reports.

From the editorial: “Gov. Christie is right for these dangerous times. He has prosecuted terrorists and dealt admirably with major disasters. But the one reason he may be best-suited to lead during these times is because he tells it like it is and isn’t shy about it.”

New York Times: “The newspaper’s endorsement, coming 10 weeks before the first-in-the-nation primary, arrived earlier than it had in the past two election cycles involving crowded Republican primary fields.”

About Political Wire

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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